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Websleuths News

Join Websleuths Radio for the final discussion of THE KILLING SEASON
with Josh Zemam, Rachel Mills and special guests including Bob Kolker author of Lost Girls

You only need one person to pedal a paddle boat. The paddle is in the middle of the boat, the steering is there, too. We had one growing up on our pond. I used it all the time by myself. Please do no think you can not get those things going fast, not fast like a speed boat, but if own one and use it a lot, you will be able to get that thing going pretty fast.

I think you can rule out the highway. Right now, I-380 is under construction and both directions are squeezed onto one side, turning it into a two lane road with itsy-bitsy shoulders.

It's a designated truck route and, with the construction, traffic is basically bumper to bumper all day long. There really isn't anywhere to safely park a vehicle without causing serious amounts of disruption to traffic.

There are construction crews on the other side of the road and it always seems like there's at least one guy standing there, looking around while he waits for his turn at some mysterious construction chore.

It isn't so clear from the overhead views but the terrain between the shoulder and the 8 foot interstate fence drops steeply and is pretty deep in weeds.

I just don't think anyone could park a car and leave it, even if there were a driver in the car. It would probably stop traffic on that side of the road because the shoulders right now are partially taken up with making lanes. Semi trucks would be hard put to squeeze by a parked vehicle; the drop off means that a vehicle couldn't pull off the road entirely.

A better place to park a vehicle would be in the trees right by where the bikes were found. There's a sort of trail going back into the woods there from Arbutus Avenue. It is curved, so once a vehicle goes around the curve (and closer to the bike trail), it cannot be seen either from Arbutus Avenue or the bike trail.

I think you're right that a puppy would get many kids to stop and just let their bikes fall while they helped the owner by catching the puppy.

Ooooooooo, I just realised it would not be difficult at all to teach a puppy to run up to people on bicycles all waggy and happy looking. Just take a few afternoons beforehand (and in some other location) to station the puppy next to a bike route and have a bag of treats. Every time a bicyclist stops, ask them to "help socialise" the puppy by giving the pup a treat.

Most people are more than happy to help dog owners train their dogs, particularly if the dogs are toy sized or obviously puppies.

A couple 15 minute sessions like that and the puppy would most likely regard anyone on a bike as a potential cookie dispenser.

And a bunch of potential witnesses who remember the guy with the cute puppy. Besides, this presupposes that he KNEW his girls (or any girls) were going past on bikes at that particular moment.

I don't buy it. What does he do with the puppy? Here hold this while I abduct your friend? Nope.

also i keep going back to the idea of this happened in elizabeths neighbourhood - is that right? i just remember that being discussed a few threads back. it seems that almost all of the attention has been directed at lyric, mm & dm and essentially no info about elizabeth... not to us outsiders & media anyway... but i wonder if there is any remote possibility that the perp is someone that was targeting elizabeth?

Well, I keep wondering that.

The location where the bikes were found really seems to point to someone with detailed local knowledge.

And the Collins family sounds like they are very social, active in their church, trying to help others whenever they can. Shades of the Smart family? Really good, fine people who accidentally met up with exactly the wrong person.

All this brouhaha about Lyric's parents would probably make such a perp smile and relax.

I suppose a stalker could have followed Lyric from where she lives in Waterloo but it seems like there would be easier opportunities to grab Lyric alone when she was in her own neighbourhood. She's old enough for many perfectly good parents to think it would be okay to let her play outside close to home alone.

Plus, Lyric hadn't been going to Elizabeth's house all summer; she'd only started doing that 5 days before she disappeared. Not enough time, I would think, for a stalker to have sussed out that one spot that would make an easy place to grab someone (child or adult).

You only need one person to pedal a paddle boat. The paddle is in the middle of the boat, the steering is there, too. We had one growing up on our pond. I used it all the time by myself. Please do no think you can not get those things going fast, not fast like a speed boat, but if own one and use it a lot, you will be able to get that thing going pretty fast.

did you ever transport the paddle boat? if so, how long do you think it would take to pull it out of the water and hitch it up some way to take it somewhere?
how do you launch this kind of boat? does it have to be dropped in at the boat launch ??

did you ever transport the paddle boat? if so, how long do you think it would take to pull it out of the water and hitch it up some way to take it somewhere?
how do you launch this kind of boat? does it have to be dropped in at the boat launch ??

We just pulled ours up on shore. You just push it out into the water to launch it. It takes maybe 5 min to pull it out of the water, not even that. I'm sure it would be much easier for a man, I was in my early teens when we got it, so I probably weighed 100 lbs at 5'2".

We left ours out of the water, usually flipped upside down so when it rained it wouldn't be so heavy to dump the water out. I could flip it over by myself.

Ok, can someone help bring me up to speed. I haven't had time to read and am lost. Gamerbinger...is this a real person? What is the latest in a nutshell?

TIA!

It's a misspelling of a real witness's name. I hope that the misspelling is enough to keep it from coming up in Google because I would sure hate to think of someone, say, a potential customer Googling him for information about him.

The latest is that LE has said they are interested in speaking to someone who was in a paddle boat on the lake between 12 noon and 1 pm 13 July (the day the girls disappeared).

LE did not specify where this lead came from, whether it was an eyewitness or a tip called in from the tip line. All they said was that they would like to speak to this person (who may be female, come to think about it).

If paddle boat guy is real, I wonder if the girls knew him. Mr paddle boat gets up to shore and offers to take the girls for a ride on the boat, but instead of taking the back to their bikes he takes them home.

COOK-MORRISSEY: I left for work at 8:30 AM. She gave me a hug and a kiss and told me she would text me and let me know when I got off of work where she would be, either at Heather`s in Evansdale or back at our mother`s home in Waterloo.

I left for work. At 2:00 o`clock, my mother, their grandmother, called and said she couldn`t find them. They`d been on a bike ride, and you know, to come directly to Heather`s home. I only work just up the street. I came directly there.

My mom had been driving around looking for them. We stood in the yard and talked for a few minutes. Heather pulled up, had not been able to find them. It was about 2:20, 2:30 PM. And so Heather said, I`m going to the police station. And that`s when she went to the Evansdale PD to involve them.

Tammy
When Mom -- I had met Mom at her house because we had had some plans. She had originally left. When Misty showed up to pick up Lyric, and Mom said, you know, The girls have been off and it`s been a little bit too long, but you know, you guys need to go find your kids, Tammy and I have some other things that we`re doing, and Tammy`s at the house.

So Mom came and got me. We got a phone call back from Drew (ph), Elizabeth`s father, saying, You guys need to get back here and help. So me and Mom jumped in the car, and right away we came back. Kelly -- we picked up Kelly, the 12-year-old son, and we started going to all these places that they`d already checked.

I said immediately to my mom, I said, Take me to Meyers Lake, take me to Meyers Lake. This is approximately a quarter to 2:00 when I asked -- or a quarter to 3:00 when I asked Mom to take me to Meyers Lake.

Any idea why Aunt T immediately suggested going to Meyer's Lake?
Did any interviews ever mention where Aunt T was up until the girls went missing?

Just a couple questions I do not recall getting answered in this case

I finished reading 10 post about not discussing family. So can the aunt be discussed or not! Tia

Got nothing new to add, but will confirm that the highway (by way of hole in the fence) can almost be ruled out, for reasons mentioned.

Also, I think I may have seen a paddleboat out on the lake once in 4-5 yrs. I used to live on Clear Lake in north Iowa, and agree: ppl buy em, use em for a season, and then they sit next to the house for years (unless you are iamnotagolem...lol @ fast on a paddleboat...eye of the paddler, I guess...j/k).

I also agree, that likely LE is asking for someone to corroborate another witness/suspect's story of who/what they saw at the lake. The confusing part is that there could really only be maybe a dozen paddleboats near this lake, and I would assume that is a staggeringly high estimate. Seems to me asking something like, "we're looking for anyone who knows anyone who's ever paddleboated on Meyers Lake," and then work down from there.

Shakes my confidence to see this Chief keep saying there are so many things he doesn't know. It's gotta be a ruse, a poorly worded version of "no comment," or he really is in the dark.

On a side note, we mentioned to a restaurant hostess here (mature, not a kid) that we lived near the missing girls from Evansdale, and she looked at me like I was from Mars...no clue what about what I was speaking. That was so disheartening. We're still in Iowa. LE dropped the ball early and often on this case, IMO. We're hoping its all a clever way of tricking the perps into goofing, but given how far the girls could have been transported, if so, before local LE even decided to call for help, is frightening.